David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Question 229: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her roles and responsibilities or those of any body under her aegis on the development and provision of early years and pre-school education; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [19383/11]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The principle vehicle for my Department, in developing and providing early childhood care and education, is the free Pre-School Year in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme. The pre-school year was introduced in January 2010 and provides early learning in a formal setting to children in the year before they commence primary school. In 2011, the ECCE programme is expected to cost €166 million.

As well as the ECCE programme, I have responsibility for two other major programmes in the area of early childhood care and education. These are the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) programme, which provides funding to community child care services to enable them to charge reduced child care fees to disadvantaged and low income parents, and the Childcare Education and Training Support (CETS) programme, which supports parents availing of certain FAS and Vocational Education Committee (VEC) courses.

The ECCE programme has been extremely successful to date with almost every pre-school service in the State involved in its delivery and a participation rate of 63,000 children, or 94% of the eligible age cohort, from September 2010. Children are eligible for the free Pre-School Year where they are aged more than 3 years and 2 months and less than 4 years and 7 months in September of the relevant year. The fact that the ECCE programme is universally available free of charge to all pre-school children, is important in terms of ensuring equality of access and school readiness.

All Pre-School Leaders working in the free Pre-School Year are required to hold minimum qualifications in early education and a higher capitation rate is paid to services in which all Pre-School Leaders and Pre-School Assistants hold higher level qualifications. Participating services are required to adhere to the principles of Siolta, the National Framework for Early Learning, and are also encouraged to implement the Aistear Curriculum for children aged from birth to 6 years, when providing age appropriate pre-school activities.

Services are assisted in this by a national team of Síolta Co-ordinators, provided by a number of National Voluntary Childcare Organisations which are funded by my Department. In addition, the 33 City and County Childcare Committees (CCCs) which are funded by my Department, play an important support role in assisting ECCE services in implementing Siolta and Aistear and in providing access to training and other quality supports.

The Pre-School Year is an important development which I hope to improve and develop incrementally over the term of this Government. In doing this, I envisage that officials in my Department will work closely with their colleagues in the Department of Education and Skills to develop a more integrated approach to early education. An example of this will be a co-ordinated approach to tackling literacy and numeracy problems from an early age.